Concept Of God

While talking about Bertrand Russel his views
about God and Religion surely occupy our mind

Russell sums up his views about religion quite plainly:
“My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard
it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold
misery to the human race”
According to Russell, not only are most religious
beliefs intellectually and morally pernicious, the religious
point of view itself “is a conception quite unworthy of free men”.
Throughout his life, Russell thus put significant effort into
opposing religious ideas and institutions of all kinds..
Russell’s discussions about religion fall largely into four
categories: his criticisms of arguments favouring the existence
of God;
his observation that religion has historically served to
impede the advancement of knowledge;
his observation that religion has regularly advanced
theories of morality that are more harmful than good;
and his analysis of religion, not simply as a body of belief
but as a mode of feeling.
The result was twofold:
first, that many people came to understand religion as a subject
about which they were entitled to develop their own
beliefs and views;
second, that arguments from ecclesiastical authority
suddenly became less formidable and less influential
than they had been for centuries. Russell himself reports
that he received the Nobel award primarily for his
anti-religious book, Marriage and Morals .
If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If everything must have a creator, then God must have a creator. Alternatively, if God can exist without a cause, then it is just as likely that the world can exist without a cause. The world, we are told, was created by a God who is both good and omnipotent. Before He created the world He foresaw all the pain and misery that it would contain; If God knew in advance the sins of which man would be guilty, He was clearly responsible for all the consequences of those sins when He decided to create man.

The argument that the complexity and purpose we find in the world
shows that there must have been a creator, Russell points out
that “since the time of Darwin we understand much better
why living creatures are adapted to their environment.
It is not that their environment was made to be suitable
to them, but that they grew to be suitable to it, and that
is the basis of adaption.

The argument that God is needed to bring justice to the world,
to ensure that at the end of time the scales of justice have been
balanced, Russell asks what evidence we have that such
remediation is ever going to occur.
“In the part of this universe
that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer,
and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of
those is the more annoying; but if you are going to have justice
in the universe as a whole you have to suppose a future life to
redress the balance of life here on earth. So they say that there
must be a God, and there must be heaven and hell in order that
in the long run there may be justice”
Russell also observed that religion is not simply a body of doctrine but also a vehicle for the expression of emotion.

Societies as well as individuals, says Russell, need to choose whether the good life is one that is guided by honest inquiry and the weighing of evidence, or by the familiarity of superstition and the comforts of religion.
Many ,after believing in God for many decades of life,
are not sure whether
their "belief" is appropriate or just a show. Is not the
entity of God the outcome of their own helplessness
to meet situations in life as and when they emerge?
They pray to Him so that He, if He exists, may answer
their prayers positively!

If we go by the theory of Karma, which is becoming
more and more convincing as a logical theory,
what is the use of God? What is the logic of an
entity like God? We have to necessarily reap the
consequences of our past actions and God cannot
undo those consequences.

The idea of God then creates in us a feeling of
dependence on an imaginary superior being and
people run to a temple or a Gurudwara or Church
for even simple day to day things in life. Is Man
who is endowed with enormous power of his
brain, his intellect, and his capacity to think so
powerless as to become dependent? All our
prayers across all religions are nothing but
expressions of our own weaknesses. We want some
one else to solve our problems.

No religionist is ever clear about God. Different
religions fight against each other in their quest
for God. Tempers run high only because they are
unsure about God even as they swear by God.

Someone suggested a solution.
Let us have an experiment: select a region or a
town or city. Deprive it of all places of worship.
People there will not pray,even without places
of worship. Let them carry on like this for one year.
Study the result. If all places of
worship are scrapped and the moneys spent on
them are diverted for human welfare,( will it be done so?)
there will be tremendous progress in the world,
poverty could be eliminated altogether and human
beings can lead a much satisfied life all over the world.
There will be no conflict of religions and no claims of
superiority, no conversions, etc. There will be ONE
religion and that will be the religion of MAN.

If everything has a cause, God must have a cause too.
Is not God then the product of that cause and therefore
subordinate to it? Perhaps to avoid this tricky situation,
Adi Sankaracharya propounded the theory that God
did not create the myriad things of the Univese
but manifested himself as the myriad things. But even
this theory is not blemishless. For, what is the
provocation for God to manifest Himself in
different forms? Thus the Big Bang theory does
not anwer as to what existed before the explosion
took place? An explosion could not have taken place
with nothing in the field.

I don't know whether for experiment if we remove temples churches etc and bring more or less a ban on worship.,that will lead to tremendous welfare or a total downfall.Because you may place a ban on abhishekam and Pooja and not on the maanaseeka poojas performed by humanbeings.That may bring in a mental disaster though financial soundness may seem to prevail
I strongly believe that Man created the concept of
God and the concept became dangerously infectious.
Those who claim to have "seen" God may have seen
an apparition of a figure which in their imagination
strongly represented God.

Islam and Hinduism believe that God is formless.
God is a supernatural power. It ultimately represents
One ness - Yet, all the teachings of prophets and saints
advocate duality in effect: when Krishna says,

Sarva Dharmaan parithyajya, Maam Ekam ( EVA)Sharanam Vraja,
whom is He addressing? Himself the One ness?
If there is no duality, whom is He asking to surrender?
or a second person the duality, which is contrary to
His concept of Oneness? If this "surrender" applies
to millions of lives on Earth, there is an implied
recognition that there are as many lives, not just One
Oneness. This is what King Janaka felt. One day while
doing puja, he asked himself, "if I am part of God, why
should I do puja to that God? Whom am I worshipping?"
Adi Shankara got the message from Shiva who appeared
in the form of a Chandaala. But Adi Shankara did
compose many verses which are against his own
concept of Advaita.


Can a society without God exist? In which the people
recognize that they are themselves responsible for
all the consequences of their lives. Because, centuries
of belief in God through different religious practices
have not ended human misery of one kind or the other.
If there were to be a God , Is God so cruel and unkind?
He is on the contrary described as "Karunaa Saagara"!

And if God also says that one has to suffer Karma Phala,
and God cannot do anything, the concept of God falls
to the ground instantaneously. All our prayers are
useless meaningless rituals.

The irony is that it is mostly believers who suffer
a lot in this world and not non-believers. Why should
Man then spend millions of dollars on places of worship
for such a God throughout the world, across continents,
even when believers often say that God is not going to
be poorer if you do not worship Him?


Jayasala 42

 

The question always remains a question.
Whether we follow Ramana ,Sankara or Russell,
it does not bother.
Jayasala 42